


Letting the Cables Sleep

by trepidatingboarfetus



Category: Grand Theft Auto Series (Video Games), Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27187115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trepidatingboarfetus/pseuds/trepidatingboarfetus
Summary: "Have you ever loved someone so much, you’d give an arm for?Not the expression, no, literally give an arm for?"Inspired by a work of glorious art on Tumblr by Eggelo with the beautiful caption above. (Thanks to zachoek who told me about the art theft. <3 )
Relationships: Michael De Santa/Trevor Philips
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	Letting the Cables Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this work of art that you need to go marvel over. 
> 
> https://imonlyarejectt.tumblr.com/post/178280471827/have-you-ever-loved-someone-so-much-youd-give-an
> 
> I don't know if they're still active in the community as it's old now, and I don't know if anyone ever wrote something along to this, but ah well, there's another now if someone beat me to the punch lol. I just saw it, and then my husband reminded me of this song by Bush that I love...the rest, as they say, is history. Enjoy.
> 
> EDIT: Thanks to @zachoek who told me that the original art belonged to Eggelo who deleted it, and it was reposted by the above with crediting it, yikes. It's still a beautiful picture, and I'm thankful they gave me the inspiration for this story.

_You in the dark_

_You in the pain_

_You on the run_

Time has dragged on for so long, days have blended into weeks and months and years, and he’s been running, running like he’s running to beat the very fucking devil, even though he’s so very far now, so many years past that place from so many miles ago. Sometimes it’s been easy to forget why he’s been running for so long. 

_Living a hell_

_Living your ghost_

_Living your end_

It’s easy to want to look to his side and see the face that’s always been expected to be there, smiling as always, ready to punch him in the shoulder, nudge him in the chin, kiss him on the lips. He’d been spoiled for so fucking long and had gotten used to just _expecting_ it to be like that always. First, before Amanda, and then after, when the false promises came. But everything had been fine, hadn’t it? They’d made it work. They’d made it work for them.

Only to watch it all fall apart in the snow. And now he’s just stuck with ghosts and memories haunting him wherever he runs.

_Never seem to get in the place that I belong_

_Don’t want to lose the time_

_Lose the time to come_

_Whatever you say it's alright_

_Whatever you do it's all good_

_Whatever you say it's alright_

He’s not even sure where he’s going, really. Sometimes, he doubles back to the cemetery just to see if it’s all even still real. There’s a feeling some days like the body is going to shamble out from behind some crypt like a movie zombie and say, “Hey there, T, lookin’ tasty! Care if I nibble on your man-made mountain oysters?” And other days, he’s angry at that bitch, wondering why the body was even allowed to be buried here at all. Why not back at home or anywhere else? Why does he have to keep coming back to this miserable place and being reminded of their greatest failure? 

He can’t even bring himself to say _his_ name anymore. It hurts too much as he grows older. 

They were supposed to grow older _together_ dammit. _Together_. 

The years pass by, and he wonders if little Jimmy looks just like him now. He wonders if Tracey is breaking boys’ hearts or faces. Do they even remember him? Is he a shadow in their dreams now? A figment of their childhood imaginations? Have they forgotten...have they forgotten….

Have they forgotten _him_? _His_ voice? _His_ touch? Did they ever know how much _he_ loved them and how much _he_ wanted the world for them? Why _he_ _did_ what _he_ did? How it was all for them? To give them what _he_ never had growing up.

Those lonely nights between the sheets where they discussed all of their futures, they were just two stupid abused kids who’d wanted better for themselves and by extension, the ones they loved. 

Wherever he goes, he never feels at home. There are too many eyes staring. They can see right through him to the darkest part of his soul. They know him, they know how he let down his best friend, the man he loved with all of his heart. Let down him and his family. It’s written all over his face, his body, his soul like a tattoo he’ll never stop wearing. 

No amount of anything he partakes into his body gives him solace because how can one find redemption in that which is not the very thing they seek? It’s gone forever to him. Buried far beneath the snow. 

_Silence is not the way_

_We need to talk about it_

_If heaven is on the way_

_If heaven is on the way_

Was it cold when _his_ life ran out onto the ground? Did _he_ face it like a coward? 

He hopes _he_ wasn’t a scared little bitch like he has been for these past few years, afraid of his own image in a mirror. 

The cracked glass on the wall of the bathroom vexes him. No matter how much hair he removes or tries to change himself, he still sees that same piece of shit who left behind the most precious person in the world. What was the point of any of this? What was the point of those future plans without the other person he’d been carefully crafting those plans for?

Drug running had always been an idea along with arms dealing, something to work towards. Something he would handle. He knew...he knew that time was running thin for the both of them for the small-time shit. They needed to do something big and make a move onwards to greener pastures. He would handle the stickier shit, he figured, because he had no family to worry about him if he took a fall. Only one person would care. 

He dared to dream anyway. 

He’d never mentioned that his plans for the future were to take care of Tracey and Jimmy because he loved them like they were his own. He’d kept that a secret to himself because that was dangerously too close to being personal. Someone might’ve accused him of actually having a goddamn heart.

But he had no other uses for so much money. He was only ever in it for the thrill of the adventure, the desire to blow up the establishment, and the love of one man. 

He’s not stupid. He _knows_ he needs to talk to someone, anyone, but paying hookers to listen gets old. He wants someone to actually _care_ about what he feels. The only one who ever did can’t hear him anymore. 

And he wishes to reach _him_ so badly, but he isn’t sure he believes in an afterlife. But he wants to believe that if there is one, he’ll find _him_ there. 

_You in the sea_

_On a decline_

_Breaking the waves_

_Watching the lights go down_

_Letting the cables sleep_

He’s the furthest out he’s ever made it anywhere as he sits on a bench near something called the Alamo Sea not far from his room at the Billingsgate, staring out beyond the waves at the setting sun and thinking that even in the stinking shitty desert, there’s something to be said about the warmth, that _he_ maybe would have liked it because _he_ was always bitching about the cold weather of North Yankton. 

It wasn’t far from where they made movies, and that made his heart clench painfully knowing that he was close to something that _he_ had loved….

The beer in his hand has long-since gone warm, and a few lights in town have come on to litter the approaching darkness, but he’s surprised by just how sparse civilization really is out here. It is beautiful desert. It is oil rigs, a penitentiary, trailers, wild animals on motorbikes, and wild animals of the furred kind. 

But does he belong here?

_I'm a stranger in this town_

_I'm a stranger in this town_

Feet carry him aimlessly, mulling past businesses that have just closed up shop for the night or went out of business years prior. The bar full of hilljacks doesn’t really inspire him since he’s a stranger here. He doesn’t want to draw attention to himself, doesn’t want eyes on him yet. He’s still feeling this place out, and really, everywhere ends up like the last with people who see him for whom he is, and he never stays long. He gets the feeling that he isn’t meant much longer for this world anyway. Not without….

Fuck, why is it so _hard_.

His left arm aches like a phantom limb except the odd part is that the damned thing is _still_ attached. It burns at the junction of his shoulder as if he were just shot there recently, and the more he even thinks of _him_ , it feels like someone’s sticking a hot poker through the muscle. 

He hisses and grabs it, rubbing it roughly, doing anything to make it go away. There’s a neon sign that goes on behind him, he notices, and it’s almost as if a literal sign is calling out to him figuratively. 

He grins to himself and sighs. “OK, I get it, I _get_ it.”

In a whirlwind of emotion, he’s through the door and talking about everything from tattoos to life to even this fucking blessed shithole named Sandy Shores with a guy younger than him who is the late-shift tattoo artist. He doesn’t bother to ask his name because there’s never really a time for that, and if he stays, he figures he’ll see him around. 

He still doesn’t really know how to express what he wants, but his arm aches so badly. It’s the arm that’s missing the hand it used to hold on those cold nights. It’s the arm that once held onto another as they ran laughing and fleeing from the cops. 

He begins to tell bits and pieces, the stuff he _can_ that isn’t incriminating, about the limb he’s missing. He describes how much he’s in pain and how he can’t erase it no matter how he tries. It’s going to eat him alive one of these days. All he can hope to do is either hold on as long as he can and accomplish what he means to do or hope that it kills him swiftly before it drives him completely insane. He doesn’t know what will happen first. He’s afraid. So fucking afraid. 

“Have you ever loved someone so much you’d give an arm for them?” The artist nods understandingly and prepares his equipment. 

They discuss what it will look like and what name to put on it, and while he’s talking, he doesn’t even recognize the name that flutters off his lips, but he gasps as it does as he hasn’t uttered it in so long. “A cross, it _has_ to be a cross because Michael--”

Goddammit, he just wants his Mikey back. He bites and cries into his hand. The guy waits patiently on him, gazes at him sympathetically. 

They talk more at a length, and the guy says all of the right things, the nice things, to where he thinks that maybe on another night if he ever gets over Michael -- a possibility he can’t even fathom right now -- he can see himself wrapped up in these legs, but right now, it just leads to the thoughts of someone else too much. It isn’t what he wants, isn’t _who_ he wants. He may never get there. 

But he thinks he’s found some sort of legacy for Michael, and he thinks it’s here. He may be a stranger, but it won’t be long before everyone in Sandy Shores knows the name of Trevor Philips.


End file.
